1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus that performs data processing with firmware updated, a program update method for the information processing apparatus, and a storage medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
With a conventional apparatus or a system, such as a multifunction peripheral (MFP), operating in cooperation with a plurality of information processing apparatuses, firmware update processing is performed as follows. First, in the update processing, the system is to be shutdown. Then, the system is started up in another start-up mode to update firmware, and the firmware of the system or a plurality of devices is updated (refer to, e.g., Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2008-282090).
The above processing needs to be performed because a running system cannot be updated. Thus, some systems including a plurality of operation systems (OSes), to update firmware (normal start-up firmware), are started up with another firmware (update firmware).
With a method for starting up with a plurality of systems, the number of times the systems need to be restarted is increased. With enlargement of software scale of the system, a time (time to start up system) to complete restart processing tends to become longer. As a result, updating the firmware tends to require a longer time.
As a countermeasure for the longer start-up time, a hibernation technique is now used. With the hibernation technique, information stored in a volatile storage device (memory) of a system at an arbitrary time is saved to a nonvolatile storage device such as a hard disk drive (HDD) or a Universal Serial Bus (USB) memory, and the saved information is written back to the volatile storage device when the system is started up next time. As a consequence, a system state is restored to “a state at the time when the information is saved” (refer to, e.g., Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2009-146061).
When the hibernation is used in combination with a configuration where the system is divided into a plurality of partitions to update firmware, even if one system is in a hibernation mode, the start-up processing can unexpectedly be performed in another system. If the firmware is updated, and then the information saved before the update is written back to the volatile storage device, the information saved before the update does not correspond to the updated firmware, thereby causing a problem that the start-up processing cannot be performed normally.
In order to prevent such a problem, the system needs to be restored from the hibernation in order to delete the saved information. Then, the entire system needs to be restarted and start-up processing needs to be executed in another system. Therefore, the processing time for updating the firmware cannot be reduced.